CD Review: Midwinter Graces by Tori Amos

Once upon a time, when Mumbai was still Bombay, and goons didn't control the way we lived our lives, Catholic communities across the city would wake up to December mornings filled with the sound of Christmas carols

Midwinter Graces,TORI AMOS
For: Rs 395

Once upon a time, when Mumbai was still Bombay, and goons didn't control the way we lived our lives, Catholic communities across the city would wake up to December mornings filled with the sound of Christmas carols. As the year came to a close, groups would take to the street for all the right reasons, back then and sing. 'Silent Night,' they would hum, and windows would open to frame smiling families.

Those even vaguely familiar with Amos's powerful body of work, going back to her 1992 debut Little Earthquakes, will expect anything but a simple set of cover tunes. For faithful renditions, one can dig out dusty compilations featuring Pat Boone and Frank Sinatra. What Amos does, bless her heart, is go back to the roots of this traditional music. She has done her homework, put in a fair amount of research, and reintroduced much that has, over the centuries, been lost in translation.

With the help of anthologies like The Oxford Book of Carols (first published eight decades ago), Amos takes lyrics and tunes back to their original form. The opening track, What Child, Nowell, rejects the traditional refrain of 'Noel' (French for Christmas) for the original part Latin-part Gallic term. She then gives us a twentieth-century take on the Biblical magi, revises medieval carols from Europe, introduces us to a couple of modern ones from the country of her birth, and adds a few originals while she's at it.

The result is a Christmas album that like all art ought to makes the familiar seem new. Among the highlights (and there are many) are Jeanette, Isabella, a French carol about two milkmaids who stumble upon the sleeping baby Jesus; and Winter's Carol, a gorgeous ballad that could have become a classic by now, had someone like Amos written it in the year 1600, instead of in 2009.

What makes Tori Amos an important, and extremely relevant artiste for our time, is her ability to constantly question what we take as given. For that reason alone, her work deserves a far larger audience. Throw out those old cassettes this Christmas. Play this instead.

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